La conciencia fiscal y sus factores explicativosun estudio empírico sobre la influencia de la participación ciudadana

  1. Mayor Balsas, Jose Manuel
Supervised by:
  1. Julio Sánchez Meca Director
  2. Gloria Alarcón García Director

Defence university: Universidad de Murcia

Fecha de defensa: 08 November 2018

Committee:
  1. Elena Quiñones Vidal Chair
  2. Angela O’Hagan Secretary
  3. Joan J. Queralt Jiménez Committee member
Department:
  1. Basic Psychology and Methodology

Type: Thesis

Abstract

Tax awareness can be described as an individual citizen's perception in relation to the fiscal ethics and tax morals of the society in which they live and which leads to voluntary compliance with tax obligations. Despite its importance, there are few studies on tax morality that focus on Spain, and even fewer on tax consciousness, because it is a more restricted concept. In the same way, when the role played in this respect by citizen participation has been studied, investigations have been limited to analysis of the differences that stem from living (or not) in a specific locality or area with a system of direct or semi-direct democracy. This has led firstly i) setting aside the individual participation of citizens which has only been considered if there are opportunities for active participation, but not if the individuals finally involved, and ii) limiting studies to countries or regions where this type of democracy is established. This thesis, intends to take a small step forward providing empirical evidence in this regard, thus supplementing the gap existing in literature. It aims to test the hypothesis that individuals who participate in the public sphere show greater tax consciousness than others. To this end, citizen participation has been measured through three types of direct personal involvement or participation: attendance at neighborhood and community meetings; intervention in the public sessions of governing bodies; and participation in processes of participatory budgets. To this end a questionnaire was developed, and distributed in a Spanish town with some experience of participatory processes experience, with a final sample size of 530 completed questionnaires. The results obtained after the processing the data through a series of probit models and a structural equations model, show how participatory individuals manifest greater tax awareness than the rest, and the fact that participating in different public spheres potentially influences, in a direct and positive way the tax awareness of individuals.